FORMS OF VITALITY IN THE CITY, THE CAMP, AND INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS
What makes Lebanon survive and rebuild?
The Vital City approaches Vitality as a process of urbanization and urban transformation. Vitality being essentially the thriving of a biological organism, enabling it to survive and thrive and evolve into the future. Applying this concept to Lebanon to try and understand how people negotiate their spaces and livelihood meant we had to study and understand “process” and “interactions” between people and their environment, to reveal the dynamics which keep Lebanon innovating. In the midst of a crisis and a health pandemic inside Lebanon today, this session is concerned with addressing the following inquiries;
What are new research considerations in the current Lebanese context on our field research and relations?
What are examples of vitalist modes of being? In what ways does public/social space enable the reconstruction of a healthier, more vital Lebanon?
What are past, current and imagined forms of partnerships that enable local communities to take a constructive role? (For example, the role of Citizen Scientists, PW etc.)
MOderator:
Professor Diana Laurillard is Chair of Learning with Digital Technologies, UCL Knowledge Lab at the Institute of Education. Professor Laurillard's research projects include: Developing in the Learning Designer suite of tools and online community for teachers and trainers, adaptive games apps for learners with low numeracy and dyscalculia, and the use of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) for professional development courses, and as a research tool.
speakers:
Batoul Yassine is an urban designer and architect. She is a research coordinator at the Beirut Urban Lab, American University of Beirut. Her research focuses on forced displacement within the discourse of informality and urban recovery in post-conflict and crisis sites. She is interested in residual private/public spaces and their appropriation by different communities. She holds a Master’s in Urban Design from the American University of Beirut and a Master’s in Architecture from the Lebanese University.
Nadine Bekdache is a practicing graphic designer and an urbanist, and co-founder of Studio for Public Works. She employs mapping, video, and other multidisciplinary methods to investigate and represent socio-spatial phenomena. Such projects involved mapping security manifestations in Beirut, exploring the communal appropriation of open spaces, and Beirut's neighborhood housing histories and struggles. She co-directed the documentary “Beyhum Street: Mapping Place Narratives”. She is also a graphic design instructor at the Lebanese University.
Joana Dabaj – Co-founder at CatalyticAction, architect and researcher
Joana Dabaj is the co-founder of CatalyticAction, a charity that works to empower vulnerable children and their communities through participatory built interventions. She holds an MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development from the Development Planning Unit at University College London. She is a Lebanese architect and researcher whose recent work revolves around working closely with displaced and host communities in Lebanon to co-design inclusive educational and recreational places; this includes participatory research, co-design and community-engaged implementation of built interventions with a focus on play and the public realm. She collaborated on various research projects with universities such as University College London and the American University of Beirut. Joana has over 8 years of experience in using participatory design and research methodologies, working with a range of diverse groups including children, refugees and women. Throughout her practice and research work, she embedded intersectionality and diversity into participatory design to address inequalities.
Elizabeth Saleh works in the fields of political and economic anthropology with a special focus on agriculture, industry, labour and gender. She currently works as an assistant professor in Anthropology at the American University of Beirut.
Rita Jarrous is an MA student in the Anthropology programme at the American University of Beirut. She is currently working on the completion of her thesis that examines waste practices in one of Beirut’s neighborhoods, and works as a research assistant for a British Academy programme entitled “Developing Infrastructural Solutions for Mass Displacements”
